bobafred

A few days ago I posted about my new iPod and asked for recommendations for various accessories. First, thanks for the recommendations. Second, here’s some stuff I bought.

For playing in my car, I was torn between the FM transmitter and the ghetto tape adapter, which both got a pretty equal amount of love from you guys. When I found the Griffin SmartDeck with Dock Connector, I thought I had the perfect solution. It’s a tape adapter with the added feature of being able to use your tape deck’s fast forward and rewind buttons to control the iPod. That rocks! Well, it would rock if it worked as advertised in my car. Another problem was a grinding/clicking/churning sound as the tape spun. When a song that rocked (Helmet) was on, I couldn’t hear the clicking. But, when a song that didn’t rock so much (Star Wars soundtrack) was on, it was very annoying. Aside from the churning, I was pretty happy with the sound quality. This accessory will be returned to the Apple store over the weekend.

In an attempt to prevent scratches, I also decide to get a case. One thing I quickly realized was that there are a lot of case options. I picked up the Incase Neoprene Sleeve. It’s advertised as fitting both the 30 and 60GB 5th gen iPod Videos, but it’s a bit snug on my 30GB. The 60 must be a real tight fit. So far, I like it. Seems like it has pretty good access to all the necessary ports and also has screen and click-wheel protection. Something that I like is that the click-wheel doesn’t seem as sensitive with the cover over it. One thing I’m a bit concerned about is that it got quite a few negative reviews at the online Apple store for leaving a sticky residue on the click-wheel. Guess I’ll have to monitor this.

So, right now I would say I’m 1 for 2 with iPod accessories. I’m going to return the tape adapter and maybe try one of the FM thingamajigs.